


The Last to Know

by afrocurl



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Community: apocalyptothon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-10 18:23:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4402433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/pseuds/afrocurl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clive has a certain focus, and only when Seattle gets more weird than usual is he finally let in on the secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last to Know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liliaeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liliaeth/gifts).



> So this uses bits of the what's coming in the second season while also ignoring a bit of the first season finale.

Clive deals with cases without Liv as she helps her brother recover from his near-death experience. He doesn’t ask many details, but he’s sure that she donates blood in the wake of how short the hospital is, if he believes Ravi. There are doubts Clive has about all of Liv’s help, but he can’t look at her too strangely because he’s gotten used to not having Suzuki on his back too often. 

Suzuki hasn’t been around for a few days and he should be worried, but the station seems to be running well without their LT and he’s not one to mention that the office is missing such a prominent position. Instead, he ignores it, goes about his cases with Liv’s help and waits for her to return because the few cases lack a certain que ne c’est quoi without her.

But when Liv comes back, Clive sees Major more and what’s most shocking there is the way that Major’s hair now mirrors Liv’s. Is there some new trend in Seattle that he’s missing because he clearly doesn’t run in that set of people? Is there something else between them again that he’s missed while she’s been tending to Evan? Too many damn questions and while Liv normally tells him everything, right now, she’s really quiet.

He’s not sure he really wants to know the answer to what’s going on. He just wants to keep up his results on the off chance he can close enough cases to apply for LT if Suzuki never returns. He’s never wanted that sort of position, but without Suzuki around everyone else in the office has been looking at him as if he’s still a leper who couldn’t handle vice and still can’t handle homicide without help. 

-

Liv’s back, and she seems very adamant about helping on any of Clive’s cases. But in addition to Liv at his side as he interviews people of interest, Major appears at her side and offers more of her unique brand of assistance. 

It’s odd to watch two people offer up the same sort of advice, but it helps the cases get solved and it helps to know that he’s still working hard while the station seems to flounder without clear leadership.

But as the two of them work with him, there’s something in the back of his mind that feels everything is just _off_. He can’t nail it down, yet he thinks that he should probably investigate what’s bothering him rather than each new gruesome murder.

-

Soon it’s not just Liv and Major who help with cases, but Ravi too. Clive half wants to see if he can add more people into his aid, but he constantly worries that the other officers will start to assume that he can’t solve a case without everyone at his side.

For whatever reason, he manages to keep them away for one case, but as he watches them from the sidelines of the ME office, there’s an increase in the bottle of hot sauce and odd behavior to match.

That still makes him nervous, but while trying to solve this case without their help, he’s too preoccupied to process what he sees there.

-

Slowly more and more people Clive knows start to sport hair that’s shockingly white, with stories on the local news about shortages of hot sauce. He has half a mind to ask Liv, Major, and Ravi about it, but it almost seems like too personal a question (like asking if he can trace his family back to Africa or if someone’s gay) so he just keeps his head down and wades through more and more investigations.

Murder, for whatever reason, has been on the rise since Liv took her leave to help her family and far too many of them have been missing brains.

He almost thinks to ask Ravi if they need to worry about a serial killer, but Ravi just stutters and tries to pass off the on salient fact as if it were nothing at all.

Clive is doubtful, but he has more cases to solve before he takes the LT exam since the SPD has finally decided to replace Suzuki, and at least three other guys in homicide are after the job.

Focusing on the exam, Clive lets everything else pass him by in a haze of odd cases, Liv or Major’s manic reactions as they investigate a case, and the occasional night of tacos from the little hole-in-the-wall place he loves.

-

More than one guy at the LT exam now has that white hair, and Clive really wants to wonder if this is some trend that he’s missed, but he wants to focus more on the pages in front of him than the actual issues surrounding people he knows in passing.

It will be four to six weeks before he’ll know if he passed the exam; if so, it will be another four weeks before he finds out whether he gets the promotion in the SPD.

While he waits for all of that, though, he finally has the time to focus on all of those odd feelings that have dominated his life for the last year. Nearly all of Seattle now has white hair and almost all of his homicides have missing brains.

Liv, Major and Ravi pass it off as if it’s nothing, but Peyton doesn’t understand why so many of her cases have that as a theme either.

Between the two of them, maybe they can figure it out.

-

Peyton agrees to meet him one night at his apartment, complete with her briefcase full of files and a determined expression on her face.

“So I think I know one thing that might help, but I don’t believe it at all,” she says.

“Well, it’s a place to start, that’s for sure, and it’s better than the odd feeling I get every day.”

“You won’t like it,” she adds, “because it’s about Liv.”

“What about Liv?” he asks.

“Well, right before her brother got injured, she told me something and I didn’t want to believe it. That’s why I left.”

“So, what was it?”

“She said she’s a zombie. I saw her kill a guy and go for his brains after. Freaky shit.”

“A zombie? You mean like _The Walking Dead_?”

“Well, I think Liv’s more the result of that party with the RageMore, but I don’t know how true it all is.”

Clive takes all the information in and thinks on it for a few minutes. The air is heavy with the implications and after he’s done doing what he should have done all the time, he says, “So if you’re right, then we’ve slowly been living in a zombified world for months?”

She hums her agreement. 

“Well, fuck. That is not what I was expecting. I mean, Liv, Major and Ravi aren’t mindless, right?”

“The opposite, actually. Does eating brains make them smarter?”

“The hell if I know,” he says, “but I think now’s the time to ask and figure out if the two of us need to worry for our safety as living beings in Seattle.”

“Deal,” she says, and then she digs out two beers from her bag. Right now, Clive will take it, because he has a feeling he’ll need to be on his way to drunk to figure out how to broach the subject with all of his zombie friends.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [redacted] for the beta help. Any remaining mistakes are my own.


End file.
